One of the major achievements of the paper was in creating techniques
precise enough to follow the motion of individual stars near the
center of our galaxy, where the density of stars is incredibly
high. Based on these observations, Ghez et al were able to confirm the
existence and type of a large black hole there, at the position
represented by the red-green-blue axis in this demo.

The length of each side of the box is about 0.08 parsecs. More
specifically, the box length is 2 units, where each unit is an
"arcsecond distance from the black hole. The center of our galaxy is
about 8000 parsecs (or 8 kiloparsecs) from Earth. And at that
distance, 1 arcsecond is ~0.04 parsecs = 8000 astronomical units
(AU)." (Quote from an email of Jessica Lu, 8 Sep 2004.)

Who made this?

This Partiview-based
Animation was made in 2004, when Jessica Lu and Andrea Ghez
supplied the data to Randy Landsberg, Mark SubbaRao and Dinoj Surendran of Cosmus at the University of
Chicago. Dinoj converted it to Partiview format.

How do I install this?

How do I start this?

In Windows, click on stars.bat (or stars_geowall.bat to run it on a GeoWall, i.e. in stereo.)

In Linux, type one of

./stars.csh
./stars_geowall.csh

In OS X, click on stars.command

When you start it, you should
see something like this. Click on the
button, and move the menu out of
the way.

How do I move around?

The key to navigation is to press a mouse button down, move the
mouse, and release the mouse button. Navigation is inertia-based, so
whatever you were doing when the mouse button is released continue to
happens.

To rotate or spin, left click & hold, then move.

To zoom, right click (and hold!) the mouse and move up and
down. (If you have a Mac with a one-button mouse, press the option key
as you click that button.)

To stop motion, click once with the mouse.

Try pressing various buttons to see what you can turn on and
off. For example, clicking on the button "g2=WHO" shows the names of
the people involved in making this demo. It is turned off by default.